About Jessica

About Jessica

About Me...

Hi there, I'm Jessica. I'm a Quad Cities photographer based in Bettendorf, Iowa and ready for travel. I am a mom to one teenage daughter and girlfriend of 8 years to the best guy ever! We live together in a house full of rescued furbabies...and a turtle, Frank.

I have always worked in a creative field. Right out of college, I was a music teacher. When I was a teenager I wanted to be on Broadway when I grew up. Not like, "oh it'd be cool to be on Broadway", like I really thought that was what I would do. I even got an invite to a special school in NYC where they train you to do just that. But, 18-year-old girls from tiny towns in Iowa don't do that. So, I took the "safe" route and went to college to be a music teacher. It didn't take long for me to figure out that teaching middle school and high school choir wasn't the path for me and in 2004 my career took a shift.

Where does photography come in? I have always loved photography. I have a terrible memory (like really, really bad). In fact, I remember very little of my childhood. I think I've always been the person taking photos at every event, well before everyone in the room was doing that. After my daughter was born in 2001, I used to set up my own little shoots with her at home. I hated the "expected" annual Sears pictures where she would stand next to a giant number of whatever age she was and cheese it up. I have those pics and I'll keep them forever. But, the ones that are my favorites and I still have on the walls to this day, are the ones where I took her out to the park or my parents house in the country. I would follow her around with my Father-in-law's film SLR and take pictures of her playing in the flowers and running in the grass.

In 2014 I began to pursue photography as a business, with a focus on pets. I love getting down on the floor and capturing the world from a dog or cat's perspective and even better their relationship with their people. I will continue to focus on pets in my photography as I see it as a special focus, and I love it. But, I realized quickly that I was doing myself a disservice and limiting myself by not being open to other areas of photography. I was getting just as much interest in taking family photos without pets and in 2017 I shot my first wedding. It took me about one hot second to fall in love with capturing all those yummy moments and details.

I love moments. I love connection. I love showing feelings, good and bad. I love telling stories through photography and these are the things I hope to share here. I'm excited to see how we finish up 2018!